Use Vagrant to automatically create and configure an experimental, reproducible, and portable Clustered Data ONTAP simulator environment

This project makes use of the excellent instructions on how to simulate Data ONTAP 8.1.1. with Virtualbox by BOBSHOUSEOFCARDS

This project is experimental and uses Virtualbox which is a non-supported configuration for the simulator. There are smaller hacks for making this work and it is not pretty. Use at own risk. Please see known issues at the bottom.

The goal of this project is to experimentally provide a largely automated, turn-key setup and configuration of a Clustered Data ONTAP simulator using Vagrant in order to ease demos, speed up testing, and help become more familiar with cDot and its integration in projects like OpenStack. Experimental environments can automatically be created and configured, they are reproducible and portable.

• System requirements
• Prerequisites
• Installation
• Usage
• Customization
  • Additional Licenses
  • Networking
  • Proxy and Caching
    • Vagrant Proxyconf
    • Vagrant Cachier
  • Customize the Clustered Data ONTAP environment
    • CLI commands
    • Chef
    • Ontapi
• Uninstall
• Known issues

• 8 GB RAM
• 15-20 GB of free disk space
• SSD recommended
• Linux / Mac / Windows (alpha)
• Internet connection

• Virtualbox installed
• Vagrant installed
• Access to the NetApp support site to download the cDOT simulator. Site access may be limited to customers and partners.

• If you use Git, clone this repo. If you don't use Git, download the project and extract it.
• Download NetApp Manageability (NM) SDK. Version 5.4 has been tested.
• Save the downloaded file netapp-manageability-sdk*.zip to this project's root directory, e.g. ~/vagrant-vsim/netapp-manageability-sdk-5.4.zip
• Download Clustered Data ONTAP 8.x Simulator for VMware Workstation, VMware Player, and VMware Fusion. Version 8.3 has been tested. Version 8.2.3 is available from the releases tab.
• Save the downloaded file vsim-netapp-DOT*-cm.ova to this project's root directory, e.g. ~/vagrant-vsim/vsim-netapp-DOT8.3-cm.ova
• Configure the Cluster base license.
  Edit vsim.conf, at the top set the 8.x Cluster base license within CLUSTER_BASE_LICENSE accordingly. The license can be obtained from the support site.
  vsim.conf:

...
# Specify the Cluster Base License
# Important: Use the Cluster Base license for Clustered-ONTAP Simulator 8.x for
# VMware Workstation, VMware Player, and VMware Fusion
CLUSTER_BASE_LICENSE="SMKXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX"
...

Important: Use the non-ESX build license.

• From this directory, e.g. ~/vagrant-vsim/, run:

$ vagrant up

• You will be asked to import the simulator as a Vagrant box on first run. Press y to proceed and import. The import will take a few minutes.
• During the deployment, a service VM will be started. The service VM will offer an ip address to the simulator and configure the VSim.
• Wait until the VSim is ready. Once ready, to access the VSim console run:

$ vagrant ssh vsim

• When done, you can destroy the entire environment. Run:

$ vagrant destroy

Customize and configure any additional licenses like Flexclone or Snapmirror.
The additional licenses can be obtained from the support site.
vsim.conf:

...
# Define additional licenses,e.g. NFS, CIFS, as a comma seperated list without spaces
# Important: Use the licenses for the non-ESX build for the first node in a cluster
LICENSES="YVUXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX,SOHXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX,MBXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX"
...

Important: Use the non-ESX build licenses.

The simulator will automatically be configured with a node-mgmt lif as well as a cluster-mgmt lif. You can customize the IP address of that lif to match your Vagrant networking setup.
Please note: A dnsmasq process is used to offer the IP to the simulator. Please ensure you don't have a conflicting DHCP server on the same VBoxNet.
vsim.conf:

...
# Host address for the VSim node auto mgmt lif which exposes ONTAPI
# Note: A cluster mgmt lif will be created with the address x.x.x.4 and an
# 	additional service vm will deployed w/ the host address of x.x.x.253
NODE_MGMT_IP="10.0.207.3"
...

Add Vagrant plugins for the use with proxies and to enable caching

If you are behind a proxy, you may want to install Vagrant Proxyconf

vagrant plugin install vagrant-proxyconf

To speed up the deployment and avoid unnecessary downloads, install Vagrant Cachier

vagrant plugin install vagrant-cachier

CLI commands and Chef can be used to customize the environment.

You can customize any additional commands that will automatically be executed line-by-line once the simulator is running and the cluster is set up.
vsim.cmds:

# Cluster status
cluster show

# Add your own commands

You can customize the environment using the NetApp cookbook for Chef.
Configure your resources in the file /chef/cookbooks/vagrant-vsim/recipes/default.rb

#include_recipe "netapp::aggregate"

netapp_aggregate "aggr1" do
	name "aggr1"
	disk_count 25
	action :create
end

# Add your own resources

The NetApp cookbook project provides examples on the resources you can use.

Though there is no convinience method provided, you can still manually use Ontapi. As an example, this project makes use of ZAPI calls for the initial setup.

• From this directory, e.g. ~/vagrant-vsim/, run:

$ vagrant destroy
$ vagrant box remove VSim
$ vagrant box remove ubuntu/trusty64

• Uninstall Virtualbox and Vagrant

• There is almost no error handling in place, please do not just abort the program when things take a while. At first start, please be patient, preparing the VSim Vagrant box can take several minutes.
• Occassionaly, vagrant destroy will error and can not delete all VM disks. These stale VMs may consume significant disk space. Manual deletion is required. Delete those VMs from your Virtualbox directory, e.g. ~\VirtualBox VMs
• The setup is currently limited to a single node cluster
• Setup on Windows doesn't work reliably

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
THE SOFTWARE.